Vote for your WeAreBrighton.com Player of the Month for January 2020

January 2020 wasn’t a great month if you were a Brighton and Hove Albion player. The Seagulls failed to win any of their five games, despite having a couple of extremely winnable Premier League fixtures and a kind FA Cup Third Round tie at home to Championship opposition.

The month had begun in promising fashion too. Alireza Jahanbakhsh kick started January, the year 2020 and the decade as a whole with one of the best goals ever scored by a Brighton player with his stunning overhead kick in the 1-1 draw with Chelsea. That moment alone is enough to see Jahanbakhsh qualify the shortlist.

Graham Potter then made seven changes for the FA Cup clash with a Sheffield Wednesday side who themselves made six.
Potter’s apathy towards the competition shone through as the players he did select looked like they couldn’t be bothered to be there.

Wednesday won 1-0 as a result and any momentum the Albion might have been building after taking four points from Bournemouth and Chelsea was gone.

A 1-0 defeat at Everton followed, which would have been a whole lot worse had Maty Ryan not been in outrageous form. Ryan had pledged before the trip to Goodison Park to donate $500 to the Australian Bushfire Fund for every save made in the Premier League that weekend.

He ended up pulling off five excellent saves himself. The only other player to come out of the Everton game with any credit was Glenn Murray, the veteran striker having more opportunities in his 20 minutes on the pitch than any other Brighton player managed in the whole 90.

Potter promptly rewarded Murray for that performance with a grand total of nine minutes game time out of a possible 180 in the 1-1 draw with Aston Villa and the 3-1 defeat at Bournemouth.

Judging by Murray’s prolonged applause to the away end at the Vitality Stadium, it looks as though he expects his Brighton career to be over with a move from the Amex to be completed by the end of the January window.

That Murray is on our Player of the Month shortlist for just 20 minutes work is a damning indictment of both how toothless we are in attack at the moment – and what a terrible month January 2020 has been for Brighton.

THE CONTENDERS
Steve Alzate
Potter continues to value Steve Alzate’s versatility and in January 2020 the Colombian international featured at right back, central midfield and out on the right wing. He continues to impress but the more he gets moved from pillar to the post, the more you suspect that at 21 years of age and in his first season of Premier League football, he may benefit from a run in a settled position.

Bernardo
It hasn’t been an easy season so far for Bernardo. Solly March was preferred at left wing back in a 3-5-2 in the early days of Potter’s reign. Bernardo then spent four months out injured and has only now received a first team opportunity because Dan Burn has dislocated his shoulder. He’s proven to be a more-than-capable deputy for Burn however and he was easily Brighton’s best player in the disappointing draw with Aston Villa.

Alireza Jahanbakhsh
Well, this is a turn up for the books. Before December 28th, Jahanbakhsh had neither a goal nor an assist to his name as a Brighton player. He notched his first for the club in the final game of 2019 against Bournemouth and then came off the bench to score a stunning overhead kick in the draw with Chelsea. He hasn’t done much since New Year’s Day, but that goal alone is enough to get him onto the shortlist.

Aaron Mooy
A rare piece of good news in January was Aaron Mooy turning his loan from Huddersfield Town into a permanent deal for just £5m. That looks an absolute steal, with the Australian midfielder continuing the fine form which had seen him win our WeAreBrighton.com December 2019 Player of the Month award. He scored his second goal for the club in the 3-1 defeat at Bournemouth but it was the game that he missed through injury which highlighted just how important he is to the Albion as we gave our most toothless attacking display of the season in his absence at Everton.

Glenn Murray
As already noted, it was Murray who came off the bench at Goodison Park and added some much-needed impetus to the attack. He was denied goal number 110 in a Brighton shirt by a brilliant save from Jordan Pickford and then saw a clever dink over the England number one drop just wide of the post. Plenty of Brighton fans think he still has something to offer, but Potter clearly doesn’t.

Maty Ryan
Ryan’s outstanding fundraising efforts grabbed all the headlines throughout January 2020 – $28,000 to the Bushfire fund for those Premier League saves over the weekend of January 12th and another $27,000 for every goal scored in the Australian A-League and W-League the previous week – but it should also be noted that he was one of Brighton’s best players on the pitch too. Everton away could have turned into a hiding without him and he made several decent stops away at Bournemouth.

Poll closes at 8pm on Sunday 2nd February